Sunday, March 17, 2013

Is there anyone with unconditioned mind?

I come across this term in many articles and comments on various forums mainly related with religion or spirituality, people use this term freely to accuse anyone for not agreeing to their views. Many people accuse each other for having conditioned mind, they all say that it's because of conditioned mind many people can not understand true nature of God or can not feel true love or understand true meaning of their religion, etc. and then non-believers also accuse believers for having conditioned mind so we can see that both sides are accusing each other with same charge. So according to many people if some one doesn't agree to their own ideas or views then the other person's mind is conditioned, polluted with some biased ideas which stops him/her from understanding their very logical and rational argument, and many times we all can think like this, it helps us to satisfy our ego and be happy (and who doesn't like this). But really what is conditioned or unconditioned mind? Are these two different types of brain, where one works differently than others? or is it just a very convenient way of categorizing people based on our own assumptions to satisfy our ego, to make ourselves happy?

Human brain or mind is very complex organ, it works in very complex way and we are still in a process to explore many mysteries associated with it. We have achieved many major breakthroughs in understanding its design and function but still it puzzles us sometimes and then we ask the question how and why it functions in certain way for certain people in certain situations? Our brain and its powers make us unique species and differentiates us from other animals of this planet, it's the reason for our dominance and survival on this planet, at the same time many of our problems can be attributed to its destructive power. Most of our actions are controlled by our brain and are result of all the information, data or knowledge we gather over the years, this is what we call conditioning of our mind. So as far as I think technically no functioning mind is unconditioned, perhaps only the mind of new born baby who doesn't know anything about this world can be called as purely unconditioned one but slowly that mind also gets trained to recognize people and surroundings, so any social animal can't escape conditioning of its mind in some way or another.

Technically we all have conditioned mind the only difference is that all minds are conditioned in very unique way, even minds of people from same family, living in similar environment function in totally different way. I think only conditioned minds are able to think, unconditioned mind even don't know how to think or even if it does then it doesn't realize that its thinking because most of us get training not only about how to think but also what to think and any training requires conditioning of mind so that we won't mess it up, we can call this process as education, training, upbringing, culture, social influence or can give any other name but basically it's a conditioning of mind so that it can function in particular way in particular situation. According to me conditioning is not always bad, actually it's very necessary for our civilization and society, because of conditioning of mind we are civilized people otherwise their would not have been any difference between humans and other animals. But this conditioning should not be to a extend where it becomes an obstacle to accept anything new, anything which seems coming from outside of those boundaries which are set by that conditioning. That conditioning then forces us to define marriage in certain way, forces us to define certain roles to each gender, forces us to label some races superior and some inferior, makes us think that certain jobs are more respectable than some other, this is all result of excess, forceful and very rigid conditioning. Anything in excess is bad and same is true for this conditioning process, this process is necessary to train our mind but same thing can prove detrimental if it takes over our mind and forces it to reject everything new without even giving it a careful consideration. So let's use our conditioned minds to create something good, accept new ideas, even if it requires to think beyond limits set by that conditioning and challenge our own beliefs and values, let's all do it because that's how our civilization will progress.